Conventions

Latin American Fan Fund

~ Cheryl

My friend Anne Gray tweeted overnight about the formation of the Latin American Fan Fund. The web page she pointed to is a bit confusing as it talks about bringing someone to Reno at the start, but then switches to San Antonio at the end. Clearly it is too late for Reno, and I suspect that was just an edit fail. San Antonio, on the other hand, is a perfect place to start such a venture. I’ve been telling the Texans for years that they should do some Spanish language programming.

Anyway, LAFF (which people will doubtless make all sorts of jokes about) appears to be live. Assuming all goes well (which means if we all rally round to help, with money if we don’t have any of the skills needed) then it will be fostering contact and cooperation between fans in the English-speaking parts of America and those from the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries. This will be a very good thing, and should help make Worldcon more international. Yay! Well done Anne. 🙂

News From SMOFcon

~ Cheryl ~ 19 Comments

SMOFcon, the annual convention for people who run SF conventions, is taking place in Amsterdam this weekend. Kevin and I had memberships, but neither of us could afford to go. Consequently news from the convention is a little light. (Some SMOFs take the “secret” thing much too seriously.) However, thanks to whoever is behind the Chicon 7 Twitter feed (Dave, Helen?), and the hard-working Petrea Mitchell, I do have some news on Worldcon bids.

The big news is an official bid for Montréal for 2019. René Walling presented it, so this is serious. Presumably René will have help from many of the people who worked for him in 2009, and they’ll all be a lot more experienced now.

The bid everyone is talking about, however, is Mariehamn in 2016. This is the location of Ã…con, a small Finnish convention that I hope to finally get to visit next year if I can find the money. The bid was presented by the indefatigable Eemeli Aro, who is well known in Finnish fandom for his ambition to run a Worldcon. I suspect that when he gets home they’ll sit him on the furnace in a sauna until he repents his foolishness. I’m certainly not backing the bid without hearing from anyone else because I want to be allowed back into Finland.

Of course a bid for a Finnish location would be a lot of fun, and will give people practice at working with Finnish fans. But I don’t think that the Kansas City folks should be too worried. (Update: see comments, the Mariehamn bid is indeed non-serious.)

Finally there was an announcement of a bid for a Boston to be held at Christmas in 2020. This is a hoax bid. If anyone from Boston says otherwise then the New Zealand committee will send a few large rugby players around to see them.

So the current state of bids is as follows:

Worldcon, YA and Women

~ Cheryl ~ 44 Comments

Yesterday’s post on women in SF led to some interesting discussion with Aurora about the visibility of women YA writers in the wider science fiction community. I thought it would be worth going over some of the issues in a separate post.

My basic thesis was that while, in the wake of the success of The Hunger Games, women writers are producing a lot of SF for the YA market right now, this isn’t being recognized by the SF community at large. I’m hearing of some very interesting books from Tansy Rayner Roberts (who may well be reading them in part because she’s a Tiptree juror this year), and Aurora mentioned a few more. Here are some that are worth checking out:

  • Moira Young, Blood Red Road
  • Ally Condie, Matched and Crossed
  • Megan McCafferty, Bumped
  • Beth Revis, Across the Universe
  • Karen Sandler, Tankborn
  • Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me

Given the way her book is picking up mainstream award nominations, Moira ought to be a serious candidate for the Campbell next year.

The question that Aurora and I were discussing is how best we can bring these writers to the attention of the SF community.

We probably shouldn’t get into discussing the YA Hugo proposal here as that’s a huge can of worms that could easily take over everything. Let’s leave that for another day, please. There are other awards.

Indeed there is already a set of awards for children’s SF&F, the Golden Ducks, which are actually given out at Worldcon. However, as far as I can see, they have mostly failed to engage the interest of the massive YA readership. They are a juried award, so young people can’t get to participate much.

SFWA, of course, has the Andre Norton Award, and welcomes YA authors as members. However, I’m not sure how successful they are in engaging with them. I saw on Twitter a few days ago that they were appealing for members to serve on the Norton jury, which suggests a lack of interest. I’m sure that the SFWA management is very busy, but equally it seems to me that this burgeoning interest in SF is a potential source of new members. I very much hope that people starting out writing YA SF will want to join SFWA, and not do an Atwood on us.

Getting a YA author as a GoH would be difficult because being a Worldcon GoH is very much a lifetime achievement prize. You need at least 25 years in the business. Ian McDonald is venturing into YA right now, and he’s very much the sort of person who deserves the honor. Indeed I’d venture to suggest that one of the reasons he hasn’t got it yet is that everyone is waiting politely to see what London does. McDonald is by no means a shoe-in, as Iain Banks hasn’t had the honor either, but the Americans won’t want to be seen as treading on London’s toes.

Worldcon can, of course, have Special Guests as well. I’d love to see Chicago try to get Suzanne Collins along, but I suspect that she’s already too big a name for them. However, getting authors to Worldcon is always a chicken and egg situation. Authors will attend a convention if they think they are likely to meet a lot of existing and potential readers there. This is why the work that people like James Bacon are doing to encourage young people to attend Worldcon is so valuable. I’m pleased to see that both Chicago and San Antonio have YA membership rates.

Locus does have occasional YA reviews from Gwenda Bond. They also have a YA category in the Recommended Reading List. I think it is about time that they did a special feature on YA dystopias (hello, Liza?).

Mostly, however, I think it is down to people to talk. If we get enough buzz going online then more people will take notice. It is always hard to get older people to take an interest in what young folks are doing, and that’s especially so when you are talking about asking old men to read books about pregnancy and marriage, even if they are SF, but talk we must. No one else will do it for us.

Well, not quite. I’d like to finish with a quick shout out to Strange Chemistry, the new YA imprint from Angry Robot. Amanda Rutter, I know the above ladies are not in your catalog, but this is very much your fight now. Glad to have you on board.

BristolCon Podcasts

~ Cheryl

One of the things we decided to do at BristolCon this year was record as many panels as possible and make them available as podcasts throughout the year. I’m pleased to report that the first one is now available. It is a recording of the game show panel, “Battle of the Books”. Warning: contains me. Also Paul Cornell and John Meaney. And some absolutely fabulous incidental music from Talis Kimberley. Go listen here, or search for “BristolCon” on iTunes.

More Convention Facepalm

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

Via Charles Tan on Twitter I found this report by Mari Ness on the difficulties she had with the World Fantasy hotel. As far as I can make out, Mari had been through 3 unsuitable hotel rooms before she approached the ConCom, and once she did they found her a room that was properly accessible (albeit deficient in other ways). Sometimes a hotel will make all sorts of promises in advance and break them on the day. But you can at least learn from experience. Hopefully people considering using the Town and Country for conventions in future will read this and take notice.

Convention Safety

~ Cheryl ~ 20 Comments

This year’s World Fantasy in San Diego seems to have been very successful, and I for one was delighted with the award results. However, there has been one very unpleasant story emerging — one about sexual harassment.

I first heard about the goings on via this post on Alisa Krasnostein’s blog, but judging from this post by Stina Leicht the problem went on much longer and was much more serious, including physical harassment.

Obviously everyone wants conventions to be safe places for attendees, and that extends far beyond sexual matters. Convention behavior policies should address other issues such as weapons, theft, and probably even people who make a nuisance of themselves in panel audiences. However, Stina and some commenters make specific complaints about the effectiveness of the convention committee in dealing with this, and I’d like to address those issues as they are not as clear-cut as they might seem.

If an individual misbehaves in space rented by the convention then it is relatively easy to chuck him out. That’s especially so at Worldcon because the venues are generally convention centers that won’t let you in unless you have a convention badge.

A convention in a hotel is somewhat more difficult to police. If the perp is a guest in the hotel it may be difficult to bar him effectively from convention spaces unless something like an entire floor has been rented. When I used to go to WisCon I recall that we had the entire 6th floor to ourselves, and were allowed to restrict access. This was necessary as the hotel was often used by wedding parties over the weekend, with the result that drunk young men often tried to gatecrash our events. But it is not always possible to reserve space like that. Sometimes convention events even take place in public spaces in the hotel, and anyone can walk through.

The events at World Fantasy, however, appear to have all taken place at parties, and here the situation is even more complicated. While most conventions are happy to publicize the fact that parties are taking place, those parties are not normally staged by the convention. They are put on by private groups: publishers, other conventions, fan groups and even private individuals with something to celebrate.

In some cases the convention will book the party space and sub-let it to interested groups. In such cases they can lay down policy, and insist that parties are restricted to convention members. However, it is quite normal for the party holders to contract directly with the hotel. In those cases those responsible for the party may well decide to let in people who are not convention members, and there’s nothing that the convention can do about that.

As I recall (and I’m going from memory on running one in 2009 here, but I may be wrong, or out of date), World Fantasy is one of the events that books the rooms on behalf of party organizers. I believe that’s true because I remember having discussions with potential party hosts who wanted to restrict access to their events to a subset of convention members. We wouldn’t allow that for a party that we helped organize. So my guess is that WFC 2011 did have a fair degree of control over party space, but I don’t know that for certain and the same is certainly not true of all conventions.

Obviously, if someone wearing a convention badge behaves badly towards other convention members at a private party, you can still complain to the convention and expect him to have his badge taken away. But again if he is a guest in the hotel he still has a right to his room there, and to be in the hotel’s public spaces.

The key here is good communication and cooperation between the party throwers, the convention staff and the hotel. If someone has to be thrown out of a party at a convention (and that should be done by the people running the party, though they may ask the convention for help) then the convention staff should be informed so that they can warn other party hosts. And if the perp continues to be a problem, hotel security can be brought in to deal with the guy. Once they are involved, there is a possibility of him getting ejected from the hotel, and he’s much less likely to try to sue a hotel than a convention.

Hopefully it goes without saying that punching the guy out, no matter how gallant and well-intentioned, is not the right way to go about things.

As we all should know, conventions are put on by volunteers. Those people do have a responsibility to put on a safe event, but equally we all have a responsibility to help them out where we can, not just assume that someone else should deal with any problems. That’s particularly the case if you are running a party at a convention, and even more so if you are serving alcohol. If someone is causing problems, throw them out of your event, and make sure everyone else gets warned.

Finally, this shouldn’t stop when the convention is over. The perp in question apparently claimed to be representing the Canadian small press, Edge. As Jaym Gates lists Brian Hades, the boss of Edge, as one of the people who helped sort things out, I am sure that is not true, and that Brian will already have taken action to ensure that this guy can’t embarrass his company again. But in other cases it may be necessary to report people to the company they work for, or are published by. Jim C. Hines has a helpful guide as to how to do this.

And if anyone happens to have a sample behavior policy that other conventions might want to copy, please let us all know.

Update: Jaym Gates has also blogged about the situation. I note that it was finally resolved when the perp misbehaved in a room rented by someone prepared to do something about it.

Initial Reactions

~ Cheryl

Well, BristolCon seems to have gone OK. We have a number of con reports linked to from our website, including a lengthy piece on local community radio. I’ll get round to writing my own report soon, but I have paid work to do right now and that takes priority.

A Con From The Past

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

While I’m off finding out about Egyptian SF, here’s something to keep you amused.

A month or two ago I received a DVD in the mail. It was a selection of recordings from the 2004 World Fantasy Con. “Why now?”, you must be asking. Well I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that Mike Willmoth and his pals are bidding for a NASFiC using the very same hotel that hosted that WFC.

I have to say that the Tempe Mission Palms is one of my favorite convention hotels, despite the fact that one of my abiding memories of it is trying to interview L.E. Modesitt by the rooftop pool while aircraft roared overhead on their way to and from Phoenix airport. The occasional noise when the flightpath is overhead is more than made up for by a good bar, a fabulous courtyard, and the proximity of a large number of cheap, good quality restaurants.

That convention also has particular memories for me because it was the first time I ever tried live-blogging an award ceremony. This was long before we started using Twitter. You had to refresh my blog regularly to see if a new category had been announced. But I immediately saw the power of the concept. I innocently emailed Liz Hand to tell her that she had won best Collection for Bibliomancy, and thereby ruined Ellen Datlow’s day — Ellen being the official acceptor for Liz — because she didn’t get to make that magic “you won” phone call. Sorry again, Ellen.

Five years later the World Fantasy Board devoted part of their annual meeting to trying to work out how they could prevent me from live-blogging their awards ceremony. How the world moves on, at times.

“But what of the DVD?”, you ask. Well, it is a mixed bag. Some of it reminds me forcibly of why I rarely go to programming at WFC, even when the official topic is “Women in Fantasy & Science Fiction”, but there are a few things that are really good. Jennifer Roberson makes a fine Mistress of the Toast. Paula Guran’s interview of Ellen Datlow is hilarious. And best of all, there is Betty Ballantine.

Betty was 85 at the time, but by far one of the sharpest people on program. She and her husband, Ian, were involved in bringing the paperback book to the USA, and the ructions this caused were probably very similar to the “ebooks have killed publishing” nonsense that we are getting today. Back in those days a paperback sold for 25c, of which the author got 1c, but they could sell 20,000 copies of each book.

Copyright was an issue back then too. Ace produced a pirate paperback edition of a much-loved UK import written by a chap named Tolkien. Ian and Betty got involved in helping get a legitimate edition published. The Professor waged a letter-writing campaign to his American fans urging them to boycott the Ace version, and that seemed to work. The pirate edition is now a collector’s item.

The DVD is apparently available for sale ($25 in the US, $30 in Canada, $35 beyond). I don’t think you can buy it online, but comment if you are interested and I’ll send you the details.

Bristol This Week

~ Cheryl

I won’t be online much this week because I’ll be rather busy in Bristol.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) I will be at the Watershed to meet some Egyptian writers — most importantly Ahmed Khaled Towfik who is one of Egypt’s leading science fiction and fantasy writers. I’ll be doing an interview with him.

On Thursday I am moderating a panel at the Festival of Literature on writing speculative literature. The panelists will be Juliet E. McKenna, Gareth L. Powell and Jo Hall.

On Friday we have a couple of signings at Forbidden Planet, featuring Juliet E.McKenna, Justina Robson, Paul Cornell, Gareth L. Powell and Richard Morgan. Then in the evening I’m on a Festival of Literature panel with Justina Robson and Tim Maughan talking about politics in science fiction.

Finally, on Saturday, we have BristolCon.

Naturally I would love to see some of you at one or all of these events.

Out and About

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

Yeah, I know, I have been away from the keyboard. I have been in Bristol at literary events. There’s a Festival on, don’t you know?

Last night I was at Foyles to listen to philosopher Steve Fuller who has written a book called Humanity 2.0. We got a great crowd — Foyles said 90 had booked — and an interesting evening. Fuller was in conversation with Darian Meacham and Julian Baggini, also philosophers, and the conversation ranged through a bunch of SFnal scenarios. David Roden in the audience raised the prospect that post-humans might not be nice people. (I mentioned Daleks in my tweet, but David said he was thinking of Cylons.) It is fascinating to know that lots of academic philosophers are putting serious thought into the question of how we define “human”.

I raised the point that we don’t need androids or aliens as we have a long history as a species of deciding that some amongst us are not worthy of being included in the truly human. Meacham made the very interesting point that the media and the general public tends to treat Oscar Pretorious as more “human” than Caster Semenya. That’s rather scary.

This evening I was in Stokes Croft for a performance of bits of the Kalevala by Nick Hennessy. I can’t speak for the quality of his Finnish pronunciation, but the performance was excellent.

I was also pleased to note that the venue was absolutely hopping on a Friday night. Justina Robson and I are on panel in the same venue next week. I’m looking forward to it.

BristolCon Schedule

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

OK, we have this sorted now.

At 11:00 I am moderating “Battle of the Books”, in which our panelists go head-to-head on behalf of their favorite books. This may get violent, and John Meaney is on the panel. I have to keep order. Urk!

At 12:00 I am moderating “The Genesis Panel”, in which our panelists explain how a novel becomes an epic. Really I need George Martin on this panel, but at least I have a good GRRM anecdote to use.The panel includes Alastair Reynolds, Philip Reeve and MD Lachlan. Cool!

I was up for a kaffeklatsch, but I have given that slot up to Guy Haley, who has a far more impressive CV than I do. If you want to talk to me, I’ll be in the bar (assuming Jo lets me have any time off ConCom duties).

Further details of my panels can be found here, and the main programme page is here.

Bristol Programme

~ Cheryl

So today I was going to write about what I will be doing at BristolCon, but we’ve just had another author express interest in coming and I’ll probably be giving up some or all of my programme slots to make room for him. It’s not as if anyone will be coming to the convention to see me, after all.

I can, however, talk a bit about the Festival of Literature. There are a couple of signings happening at Forbidden Planet on the Friday, for which I shall be doing some guest wrangling, but I’m also on two panels.

On the Thursday evening Juliet McKenna, Jo Hall and Gareth Powell will be talking about speculative fiction. I’ll be chairing this one. And on Friday evening I’ll be joining Justina Robson and Tim Maughan to talk about politics in science fiction. Tom Sykes of UWE will chair.

I guess I don’t have that many readers in Bristol, but if you are local please consider coming along to one of these events. Firstly this is the first year for the Festival of Literature, and we’d love it to be a success so we can have more of them. And in addition we’d like the SF&F-related items to be a success because then, of the Festival does continue, they’ll want more such items in later years.

You can read more about these events on the BristolCon website, and you can book tickets from the Festival website.

Not Just For Kids

~ Cheryl

The Bath Festival of Children’s Literature is taking place at the moment. You don’t see much science fiction or fantasy at the main Bath festival, but when it comes down to books for kids there is plenty of it about. Not surprisingly, therefore, the audiences for the SF&F readings attract people of all ages, including me.

I was in Bath today because I wanted to meet Philip Reeve as he’s kindly agreed to attend BristolCon (apparently his first SF convention since going to Eastercon as a kid — so we need to make him very welcome). I’m delighted to say that he’s excellent on platform as well as being a fine writer. The draft programme has him on a panel I’m moderating, along with Al Reynolds and MD Lachlan. I’m looking forward to it.

On stage with Philip was his Scholastic stable-mate, Moira Young. She’s a debut YA novelist, and despite living in Bath turns out to be Canadian. While this might be her first published novel, it is by no means her first time on stage. She’s been an opera singer, and if I remember rightly a stand-up comic as well. I would have loved to get her to BristolCon, but she’s going to be touring North America in October. She told me that she will be in San Francisco, so BASFA folks should look out for her.

Moira’s book is Blood Red Road, and it is being marketed to the Hunger Games audience. While it does star a tough young girl, it is actually more of a post-apocalyptic Western. Moira cited John Wayne movies as an inspiration. The short section she read was very good, and I’m looking forward to the whole book. Heads up, Canada, you have a good one here.

Eurocon TV

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

You may remember me tweeting from Stockholm that the Friday panels at Eurocon were being filmed. Well, the results of that are now available online. You can watch the following:

Ian’s speech is the only one of these I arrived in time to see, so I am very grateful to the Stockholm folks for making these available.

Bristol Festival of Literature

~ Cheryl

Last month I blogged about a new Festival of Literature that will be happening in Bristol around the time of BristolCon. I’m pleased to be able to report that the full programme is now available and ticket sales are open. We have been involved in creating several programme items for the Festival. I’m involved in a couple of them. You can find out more about this at the BristolCon website. Please note that I didn’t write the panel descriptions.

Colin Harvey Memorial Auction

~ Cheryl

One of the things we want to do at BristolCon this year is raise some money for the charity that Colin Harvey used to work for, Above & Beyond. We are planning on running a silent auction at the con. If you were a friend of Colin’s and you have something you would like to donate to the auction please get in touch. We don’t need a huge number of items as the con will only have between 150 and 200 members, but it would be great to give the charity a good contribution.

A Day in Avalon

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Today I went to Glastonbury for the Write Fantastic event organized by Liz Williams at the Grail Centre (which she and T. now manage). They have a fabulous exhibition of original art by Anne Sudworth there at the moment. And the conference was good too.

Many thanks to Kari Sperring for picking me up in the morning, and to Jo Hall for the company on the way back. It was lovely to see Anne, and also Erzebet Yellowboy who had come all the way from Wakefield to sell Papaveria Press books. I am now the proud owner of a paper copy of Hal Duncan’s fabulous poetry collection, Songs for the Devil and Death.

Liz opened the day with a fine talk about Dion Fortune and her influence on the novels of Marion Zimmer Bradley. Kari spoke about the historical evidence for King Arthur (which she neatly illustrated by holding up a blank sheet of paper). I discovered that the Welsh habit of making up “ancient” Celtic legends is actually many centuries older than Iolo Morganwg. Freda Warrington, being the Guest of Honour, talked about her books. There were also talks about John Cooper Powys and about the Glastonbury Zodiac. Regardless of whether the zodiac exists or not, Katharine Maltwood appears to have been a fascinating person.

Glastonbury is, of course, as weird as ever. We had to go into town to get lunch and Jo bravely took on the task of preventing me from being captured by the gravitational pull of the bookshops, which is just as well as I can’t carry much these days.

I’m now back home, but will be heading out to London early tomorrow to catch Himself at the British Library.

Busy Weekend

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

There’s a lot going on this weekend. I would very much like to be in London on Friday for the tribute to Rob Holdstock at the British Library.

Unfortunately I can’t make that, because I’d already promised Liz Williams that I’d come to her conference in Glastonbury on the Saturday. I’m not 100% certain that I’ll make it as this does depend on the generosity of other people providing transport, but the plan is to be there.

I could, I guess, have gone up to London for the day on Friday and got the last train back, but that would get very expensive as I do need to be in London on Sunday for another British Library event, this one featuring Neil Gaiman, Farah Mendlesohn, Kari Sperring and Peter Hamilton.

I’ll be staying overnight (I had a pile of airline points I needed to spend some of or they would expire, so I could get a hotel room). I would love to stay a bit longer, because S.J. Chambers is arriving on Monday for a Steampunk Bible event on Tuesday. However, at the moment I’m still doing the ice pack and heat pack treatment on my shoulder three times a day (down from five, which is excellent progress). I won’t be able to do that when I’m not home, so I don’t want to risk too many days away. I’m hoping to see S.J. for lunch on the Monday before coming home.